Human-environment Interactions

by Brad Powell

Interior design is the planning of interior environments suitable for their intended use through the application of knowledge of human-environment interactions. – Brad Powell

9.13.10 | The most succinct definition of interior design is simply: the planning of interior environments. Most of us, however, need a bit more direction in order for a meaningful understanding to take root. Hence my short elaboration – in which interior design is based upon knowledge of human-environment interaction – is intended to move the general notion of interior design from the realm where only the ideal, the potential good and the emotions are involved to a more general blend of science and art so that we can develop a consensus that will ultimately align the public’s notion of the import of interior design with what the profession actually believes is its potential.

This part 3 begins exploring my key concepts: planning, interior environments,and human-environment interactions. I will begin with the central elements –interior environments and human-environment interactions – because these interrelated phrases point to a more focused direction for interior design. I will address the use of the word planning (instead of design) in the next installment, as well as elaborate on the importance of Big D Design in the context of my definition.

Interior Environments

My definition uses the phrase interior environments rather than interiors or interior spaces simply to emphasize that interior designers are creating environments with all of the implications that result from aligning our thinking about interiors and, indeed, all of the built environment, with our thinking about the natural environment.

There is no escaping that humans and its buildings and other artifacts are integral parts of the biosphere, the zone of life on Earth, and that the biosphere shapes us and we shape it, etc. Accordingly, interiors as environments, carry on the traditional role of the environment: an aggregation of forces that continuously shape human beings on many levels over spans of time ranging from thousands of years to a few short months, days or even hours.

Human-environment Interactions

Over the past decade or so, interior design has made some progress in changing the focus of the profession from a mindset that, in effect, primarily emphasizes the visual/emotional impact of the human-environment interaction, to a more complete consideration of all human senses and subjective states. This shift has also begun to address the next level, organizational behavior, and in some cases, the interaction of the organization with adjacent communities. The sustainability movement has added an additional layer of concern, heightening our awareness of the impact of the built environment on the biosphere.

 one of the most remarkable capabilities of the human species is its ability to create its own environment. 

The A&D community, and in particular interior designers, intuitively perceive that their professions can help remake the world. Still, for the most part their formal training does not provide a complete conceptual scaffolding for a careful consideration of what it means to reshape our environment, and concomitantly, to be reshaped by that new environment.

We all know, through the studies of evolution, genetics, anthropology and many other sciences, that the natural environment has shaped all plant and animal species so that they have become what they are. Most of us, however, fail to follow this line of thought to consider the impact of creating our own environments: the built environment, urban and suburban spaces and, everywhere, a variety of interior environments, all comprising or constituting independent and interdependent ecosystems.

One of the most remarkable and distinctive capabilities of the human species is its ability to create its own environment in infinite variety. This is the great opportunity and challenge of interior design, and on a larger scale, urban design.

Since humans in the Western world predominantly spend their time indoors, interior design is becoming an increasingly important factor in creating more of the Earth’s ecosystems constituting the biosphere. As a result, those who create interior design bear the weight and responsibility of knowing that their work can have a dramatic and influential effect upon humans, as a species, as societies or organizations, and as individuals. With this in mind, the salient characteristic of interior design – perhaps not as it is presently practiced and taught, but as its future surely will be – is that it is founded on the broad scope and profound impact of the environment upon humans (and all other life forms), and vice-versa.

 … humans have constructed elaborate protective shields against the forces of other environmental elements… 

Through our ability to create our own environments, humans have constructed elaborate protective shields against the forces of other environmental elements: weather, climate, wild animals, other humans in the form of armies or just predators, robbers, etc. This shield intersects and inhibits forces that have shaped, and would naturally continue to shape, our species and all elements of the Earth. Consider for example, that anthropologist say that our ancestors – before extensive, stable built environments – had the physical fitness of today’s olympic athlete.

Now, we have evolved to suit our new built environments. The flip side of intervening against forces that would otherwise mold us, is that the environments with which we have replaced the natural environment have the same potential for influencing, and have influenced, the shape and habits of our species. Compare the olympic-level fitness of our ancestors that to the running trend of American youth to obesity. This wasn’t the case even 100 years ago when, although the built environment was fast expanding, much of our population spent most of their waking hours outdoors, working the fields, driving cattle, grinding cereals, doing laundry or other tasks/jobs requiring manual labor.

Interior design has responded belatedly and rather weakly to this development, first concentrating on the corporate/club workout facility, and finally beginning to incorporate a higher level of interior workplace movement by designing inviting stairwells, easy access to external walkways and so on. Not much, but a promising trend. (For how many years do chair manufacturers have to tell us that sitting all day is a very bad idea?)

The separation of humans from the broader environment through the built environment poses many other dangers, some of which we are just beginning to discover. Epigenetic changes are heritable changes in genetic expression caused by processes other than changes in the genome or DNA and are frequently attributed to environmental causes. A recent article in Time magazine states:

. . . there's evidence that lifestyle choices like smoking and eating too much can change the epigenetic markers atop your DNA in ways that cause the genes for obesity to express themselves too strongly and the genes for longevity to express themselves too weakly.

(See Why Your DNA Isn't Your Destiny, Time magazine, 1.6.10,http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1951968,00.html

 … we are [moving toward an expansive built environment] with reckless ignorance of the effects of what we are creating. 

Interiors with noxious air quality are a clear example of health problems stemming from poorly designed interior environments. These range from increased asthma afflictions to the effects caused by second-hand tobacco smoke to the respiratory problems resulting from the formaldehyde-filled trailers for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina, to say nothing of hospital infections killing 100,000 people annually and the historical afflictions from other interiors conditions including lead-based paint, asbestos and coal dust.

More recently, scientists have established that other factors thought to shield human populations from the natural evolutionary forces create their own unintended consequences. The biophilia movement is a case in point. (See the work of Edward O. Wilson and, for example, Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life, Stephen R. Kellert, Judith Heerwagen, Martin Mador).

At the same time some biologists have come to believe that people have inadvertently been shaping their own evolution through human culture, broadly defined as any learned behavior, including technology. (See New York Times, March 1, 2010, Human Culture: An Evolutionary Force by Nicholas Wade,http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02evo.html?_r=2)

Biologists have traditionally seen [culture] as a shield that protects people from the full force of other selective pressures, since clothes and shelter dull the bite of cold and farming helps build surpluses to ride out famine. . . .

Although it does shield people from other forces, culture itself seems to be a powerful force of natural selection. People adapt genetically to sustained cultural changes, like new diets. And this interaction works more quickly than other selective forces, ‘leading some practitioners to argue that gene-culture co-evolution could be the dominant mode of human evolution,’

-Kevin N. Laland, et.al, February issue of Nature Reviews Genetics. (See http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v11/n2/abs/nrg2734.html)Dr. Laland is an evolutionary biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.” ibid: Human Culture: An Evolutionary Force

The work over the past decade in the workplace performance/strategy sector of interior design shows clearly the potential influence of our built environments and how their design affects the interactions of groups of people and the resulting culture and work practices. Much of the important practical work and knowledge in this area has taken place in a factory setting, an area in which, inexplicably, interior design has failed to press either its knowledge or its need-to-know. There, long assembly lines have been replaced by cellular teams (the Toyota Production Method, or lean manufacturing), with dramatic results in productivity. Healthcare settings are now also making important advances, in significant part due to the efforts of the Center For Health Design and the Evidenced Based Designinitiative and the Pebble Project. (www.healthdesign.org/)

The portentous aspect of creating our own environments is that, while we are with accelerating haste moving toward an expansive built environment, we are doing so with reckless ignorance of the effects of what we are creating. Moreover, we see in the A&D communities an unbalanced focus on innovation and novelty, and an avoidance of an accretion of best practices that is necessary for learning and advancement.

Much of the work relevant to interior design seems to be done outside of the field,per se, and in large part appears to be ignored by design educators and practitioners alike. A very helpful bridge from practice/education to basic research is provided by Research Design Connections(www.researchdesignconnections.com), and ties to relevant research published in peer-reviewed publications can be found at InformeDesign(www.informedesign.com).

Even the general press is picking up this theme. Dr. Claudius Conrad, a surgeon and highly trained musician, has been studying the effects of music in health settings ranging from the operating room to patient rooms.

He found that a folk and death metal mix increased the time it took expert surgeons to do the procedures, but did not affect their accuracy compared with silence. It also negatively affected their ability to learn a task: their accuracy did not improve when doing the task a second time while listening to the same music. While listening to Mozart, surgeons’ speed varied, but their accuracy improved compared with silence.

(See Musical Surgeon Examines the OR Soundtrack, by Carolyn Y. Johnson, Boston Globe, 12.7.09,http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2009/12/07/musical_surgeon_examines_the_or_soundtrack/?page=2;

Dr. Conrad has also done research about the biological basis for healing through the use of music. (See Claudius Conrad, A Musician Who Performs With a Scalpel .http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/health/20prof.html?_r=1; And, of course, there have been many studies on the use of light to mitigate depression. (See, for example, Therapy: Lighting Up a Life, Literally, by Nicholas Bakalar, New York Times, April 19, 05, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19ther.html?pagewanted=print&position=.

Others have studied the affect of interiors on knowledge retention. On September 6, 2010, the New York Times published an article, Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits. The writer asserts that, “instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention.”

In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.

Apparently the word has not reached educators or interior designers working in education, business training, etc.

(See New York Times, Sept. 6, 2010, Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits, By Benedict Carey,http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/health/views/07mind.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage)

In black letter, the environments we create are important shields against many adverse forces of nature, but they bring their own significant dangers and opportunities. The key is learning how humans interact with their environments: the protection we need, both from the natural environment and our built environments, the support they provide that enables greater accomplishments, and the inspiration that brings out the best in us.

 … interior designers will have to rebalance their great passion for design toward a greater passion for the reasons for, and the results of, their designs. 

Interior Design is Forking

In time and with experience the practice and study of interior design has naturally evolved and we can now see that it is forking. The work of design is traditionally rooted in the decorative arts, supported by the engineering professions. Interior design professionals, including those properly referred to as architects or decorators, may elect to remain on this path in accordance with their particular talents and interests, but it is understood that the decorative aspects of interior design is subsumed within my definition.

The new fork reflected in my definition is represented by a notable trend to think of the interior design profession as being human-centric, largely expressed as studying the effects of the built environment on humans, as individuals, and in groups or organizations, and on the environment in general. (e.g., Susan Globus’s definition, part 2, officeinsight 9.6.10, A Random Walk

Interior Design: Toward a New Definition - Part 2: Interior design is the creation of environments that sustain and support human beings (to live) to the highest of their capabilities. See also, Mary Burke’s comment in this issue, AIA Interiors and AIA Knowledge Net: . . . the design inside buildings is meant to respond to the needs of the user, whatever those needs may be.)

But, as stated in part 2 of this series, officeinsight 9.6.10, the conceptual approach advocated by Ms. Globus and Ms. Burke makes a good elevator speech describing some of the objectives of interior design, but it is not suitable for a definition of the field. A more complete picture of the built environment indicates that the role of interior design is to use the knowledge of the interactions of the multitude of elements in an interior space(s) to plan the space(s) in a way that shapes those interactions to achieve a stated purpose and avoids effects that are inhibitory or produce undesired results.

In addition to the traditional notions of interior design, the scope of this function necessarily includes air quality, interior climate, the nature, sources and quality of lighting, the general physical needs of its occupants and the requirements for the activity being conducted; where appropriate, it may also include the selection of the location of the space being designed (geographically and by building and location within the building), and also, in the case of new construction, the aspects of the architecture and operating systems that affect the use of the interior space.

This shaping, this design, may be used for good purposes or harmful purposes, it may respond to needs, or to other ends. In the end, however, effective interior design flows from a knowledge of human-environment interactions.

Conclusion

My definition – defining interior design fundamentals in terms of human-environment interaction – does not imply that interior designers must become ecologists, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologist or even architects. Without an application of the knowledge of the underlying sciences, however, interior design is in large part decoration. This means that interior designers will have to rebalance their great passion for design toward a greater passion for the reasons for, and the results of, their designs.

Finally, I want to emphasize that no amount of additional knowledge will replace or make redundant the role of the interior designer. The many bits and pieces of knowledge that will aid in interior design will not supplant the ability to pick and choose the relevant and important pieces, nor the great ability and training it takes to synthesize information to create a thriving, purposeful interior environment. Interior designers, like lawyers and doctors, will assemble the pieces of knowledge into useable chucks of behavior in the form of best practices. Moreover, as I discuss in the next installment, the particular talent of designers is to create an inspiring physical reality, working with the important constraints that should be a part of any programming. Budgets, schedules and the usual assemblage of design preferences and bare functional requirements are just the beginning.

Will this move the profession from a heavily-weighted fine-arts base: Yes. Will it create more constraints: Yes. Will it require more and different education: Yes. Will it limit creativity. No; it will require greater creativity, but creativity that is more directed. The psychology of the effects of the aesthetic aspects of design will remain an important aspect of interior design, and most likely, become much more important.

Next week, I will discuss why I use the word “plan” rather than “design”: The specialized meaning of “design,” as used in the design professions and the press that address it is a barrier to the effective communication with the public at large, which can much more easily relate to the concept of planning. I will also offer some thoughts on interior architecture and the use of that phrase, as well as discuss thinking being done by others in this area.